Frontenac County Council

Jeff Green

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Frontenac County taxes to rise by 3%

Members of Frontenac County Council cleaned up a few last minute items for their 2009 budget at their monthly meeting last week (February 11).

They readily accepted a staff recommendation to increase the salaries for non-unionized employees by 3%, but Frontenac Islands Mayor Jim Vanden Hoek suggested they take something less than a 3% increase in their own pay.

“Maybe we should take zero,” he said.

South Frontenac Mayor Gary Davison agreed, but said he would like to see a better system for reimbursing members for the cost of driving to meetings.

North Frontenac Mayor Ron Maguire agreed as well, but wanted to go further.

“I'm all for sending the message. We could take no increase for ourselves,” he said. “A few months ago we raised the salaries of our top end employees to be competitive with other counties. I don’t know if it can be rolled back, but I would like to see that.”

“I'm happy with a 0% increase and leave the mileage the way it is. As far as Mayor Maguire's suggestion, I don't want to go there,” said Vanden Hoek.”

County Warden Janet Gutowski said “normally I would like to keep to the rate of inflation but we are looking at governance later this year. Mileage is a whole other issue. I support sticking to the 0%.”

A motion to that effect was approved.

The savings from this mostly symbolic gesture, about $1,000, had little effect on the $8 million levy to ratepayers.

With a tax increase still sitting at 4.1%, Treasurer Marion Vanbruinessen recommended using $50,000 from the Counties' stabilization reserve to bring the increase down. This measure, in addition to some last minute savings in the Fairmount Home for the Aged budget, brought the increase to 3.32%.

“The County has built up a stabilization reserve over the years to deal with the possible effects of an economic downturn, which we are facing this year with increased costs for Ontario Works and other social transfers and a decrease in investment revenue. It is reasonable then, to use some of it this year,” Vanbruinessen said.

South Frontenac Mayor Gary Davison said he would like to see the tax increase brought down to “something less than 3%,” and suggested that more be taken from the reserve.

Vanbruinessen quickly calculated that if $80,000 were taken from the reserve instead of $50,000, the increase in County property taxes would be brought down to 2.95%, and this was done.

The stabilization reserve stood at $495,000 coming in to 2009, and with a $120,000 contribution to the reserve already in the budget, pulling $80,000 out still leaves $535,000 in reserve for a future rainy day.

High Speed for council members

Although the four County Council members will see no increase in their salaries this year, they will be receiving high speed internet service, courtesy of the County.

A proposal to pay for high speed internet for the four Council members, at a cost of $2,000 in 2009, and $1,400 in subsequent years, was approved. This did not impact the 2009 budget, because the money will be taken from the $40,000 warden's reserve fund, which was already in the budget.

The move was made in the interest of facilitating communications between the County office and its far -flung Council members.

Gutowski questions Public Health budget

In her role as County representative to Board of Directors of Kingston Frontenac Lennox and Addington Public Health, Janet Gutowski informed County Council of two budgeting concerns she recently brought to Public Health.

“We are asking Public Health staff to develop guidelines to deal with reserves which are very high. We were also asked to approve renovations in the budget, but there were no cost figures included in the budget,” she said.

Gutowski reported that she asked for costs of the renovation in November, and was told they would be available in January, but in January she was told the information would not be made available until June.

She said she is setting up meetings with municipal representatives who sit on the Public Health Board to talk about her concerns over financial reporting.

Transportation by any other name …

No Frontenac County budget process can be completed without at least a bit of a debate over transportation, and this year was no exception.

This year the issue was not about how much money to spend, $80,000 was in the budget and the majority of Council were ok with that. The concern was over where ‘transportation’ would be located in the budget document, and whether the word transportation should be used at all.

For years the County has funded rides to medical appointments and other necessary services for people in the County who would otherwise have difficulty accessing service. They did this through grants to Northern Frontenac Community Services (Sharbot Lake) and Rural Visions (Sydenham).

Northern Frontenac Community Services established a dispatch service, called Rural Routes, three years ago, and Rural Routes has been lobbying for direct County support ever since.

Last year the County allocated $74,000 towards transportation, with the proviso that Rural Routes, Rural Visions, and other agencies that provide rides (the Canadian Cancer Society among others) put together a business plan for an integrated County transportation service.

A series’ of meetings led to the formation of a fledgling transportation collaborative that includes both Rural Routes and Rural Visions. But when one source of funding for the collaborative, Ontario gas tax rebate revenue, became unavailable, the business plan was weakened considerably.

So, when there was an $80,000 budget line for transportation in the 2009 Frontenac County Budget, it was flagged by Frontenac Islands Mayor Jim Vanden Hoek.

“I have no problem with the $80,000, but I think that since provincial gas tax money is not flowing and therefore the business plan has not yielded a solution, I think those two providers that are out there should come back to Council to ask for those funds,” he said.

“I’m a bit reluctant to create the impression that the County is the provider of the service.”

Vanden Hoek suggested that $80,000 be placed in a “contingency fund for special projects”, leaving the word ‘transportation’ out of the budget entirely.

South Frontenac Mayor Gary Davison expressed little sympathy for the process that took place last year.

“I remember asking the service providers to get together and provide a service plan. It would appear to me we had a bunch of meetings, but I don’t see an improvement in the service out there,” he said.

County Chief Administrative Officer Elizabeth Savill intervened, saying “I think it is important to state that the people in that project made a real effort. There was a high level of frustration when at the last minute we found out we would not be eligible for the provincial funding, but they made every effort to complete the plan that was requested.”

County Warden Janet Gutowski and North Frontenac Mayor Ron Maguire, who have supported transportation in the past, both said they would like to see transportation in the County budget, but they accepted the suggestion by Vanden Hoek.

“It’s certainly a commitment to transportation, whatever we call it,” said Maguire.

County Council approved the expenditure.